Famine

Famine is the culmination of a long process, typically covering two or
more crop seasons, in which increasing numbers of people lose their access
to food. Although early detection seems highly possible, the origins of
famine are unclear, and early response is therefore rare. Famine is
distinct from generalized
chronic
hunger,
malnutrition
, or undernourishment. It is a more dramatic and exceptional event that
triggers institutional responses.

Famine has been defined as the regional failure of food production or
distribution systems leading to sharply increased mortality due to
starvation and associated disease. Excessive mortality—deaths that
would not have occurred otherwise—are a core feature of famine.
Other important determinants of famine are regional issues, shifting
market demand for different foods, and changes in the food aggregate
supply. Famine also leads to extensive social disintegration, hoarding of
food, smuggling, black-market food sales, and crime. Many people in
distress sell their only assets such as their jewelry, animals, or land.
Families often divide in search of work or succor—wives may even be
cast adrift and children sold. Out-migration also increases as people
abandon their lands, homes, and communities in desperation.

Famine is generally accompanied by a recession in the entire rural
economy, affecting production and exchange, employment, and the income of
farm and nonfarm households alike. Landless laborers, artisans, and
traders are among those most vulnerable to famine because of shrinking
demand for their labor, goods, and services. Fishermen and those who raise
livestock are also vulnerable because they rely on the exchange of meat
and marine products to obtain the cheaper grain
calories
they require. Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, has
argued that famine is more than just severe food shortage. His economic
theory of famine is based on evidence

When inadequate food supply in a region causes excessive mortality,
the region is in a state of famine. Economic, political, and social
forces contribute to the situation.

[AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.]

that even with relatively small changes in the food supply, famine has
been caused by other economic factors. Each person has an economic
"entitlement," a range of different goods that can be
acquired with an individual's resources, according to Sen. People
starve when their entitlement is not enough to procure the food required
to survive. How much the food is available to people depends on income
distribution and the ability to provide services that others are willing
to pay for. However, this does not mean that the supply of food is
irrelevant in the cause of famine. A scarcity of food will usually
increase the competition among people to acquire it, and thereby increase
its price. For those already close to the margin of hunger and poverty,
this may drive them to the point of starvation.

The twentieth century saw four major famines: the great Bengal famine in
colonial India under British rule in 1943–1944, in which more than
three million people died; the famine in several provinces of Ethiopia
between 1972 and 1974; the drought and famine in the Sahel region of
Africa between 1968 and 1973; and the famine in Bangladesh in 1974 (the
same region as the 1943–1944 famine, but now under a different
government). It has been argued that the only way certain parts of the
world can become less prone to famine is through economic development.